For the first time in his life, Edward Ratcliff was a free man. He didn't have to return to the farm in James City County where he'd been born a slave.

But he was ready to go home, back to York County and the Virginia Peninsula, where, three years earlier, he'd left his wife, Grace, and daughter, Hannah.

They were waiting for him.

LINGERING EFFECTS

War had been hard on Edward.

Grace could likely see the toll that it had taken.

Edward was 32 and suffering from rheumatism. He'd caught a bad cold in Texas, and the effects lingered.

But he was home. And he wasn't alone.

Freed blacks were flocking to Virginia.

In March 1867, Virginia was designated Military District No. 1. The government was trying to attract freed slaves to the state with offers of 40 acres of land and a mule.

Two years earlier, Congress had established in the War Department (now the Defense Department) the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands. It was commonly referred to as the Freedmen's Bureau, and its mission was to coordinate all matters related to freed slaves.

A school textbook published by the bureau warned black families that they had much to learn about freedom.

"My friend," it read, "you was once a slave. You are now a freed man. Your experience in this new position has been brief. Your knowledge of what may rightly be expected of you is limited."

Large numbers of freed slaves made their way to Alexandria, Hampton, Norfolk and Yorktown.

Edward, Grace and Hannah followed other black families and some American Indians to a small community on the York River just up from Yorktown.

The community came to be called the "reservation," and its location was good.

Old Williamsburg Road - the route that George Washington used to take his troops to Yorktown for the turning-point battle of the Revolutionary War - bisected the region.

Cheesecake Road stretched from Yorktown to Grove, near James City.

Most of the families clustered around one of those two roads. Families on the lower edge of the neighborhood would travel to Yorktown to purchase goods. Families on the upper end would go to Williamsburg.

According to the U.S. Census of 1870, 48 percent of the black men in York County were farmers. Nine percent were oystermen.

Edward returned to farming. It was what he knew.

It's unclear whether Edward owned land at this time. Some documents suggest that he rented.

Whatever parcel he farmed would have been difficult, at best.

In York County, centuries of heavy farming had bled the land of nutrients.

Everyone at the reservation felt the hardships. And everyone at the reservation worked together to survive them.

"Most of the people were very close neighbors," a former resident of the reservation told college students several years ago. "They worked together. When the time came to harvest, they would go to each other's farm and assist them in harvesting, butchering and things like that."

LIFE WITHOUT SLAVERY

Farming might have been a challenge, but at least it was a familiar one. Far more difficult was learning how to negotiate life in this new world freed of slavery.

In nearby Hampton - home of Fort Monroe, or Fort Freedom, as slaves called it during the war - white men published a newspaper for the freedmen. It was called the True Southerner, and its stories dealt with life after the war.

Writers were honest, encouraging black men to make the best of their situation.

"The chains that held them in involuntary servitude are broken," one story read. "The whip that lacerated their flesh has fallen harmless to the ground."

But because of slavery, the paper noted, "the freedmen are generally destitute of education."

If the country is going to survive, "let the freedman labor to educate himself and his children."

Some stories - written by columnists - were light, offering life advice:

"Let me urge you to the strictest economy in all your expenses, that when you have a home you will have some means with which to decorate that home, that it may be an attractive place to yourself and family."

Purchase quality goods, it recommended, not just cheap goods.

Have at least two outfits - one to wear to town and one to wear for work.

Some stories delivered promising news:

"We are pleased to learn that Colonel Ewell of Williamsburg, President of William and Mary College, and late Colonel in the Confederate Army, is in favor of Negro suffrage."

At the start of a new year, one writer noted, "how different these days are from the old times when the first of January was a day of hiring and selling the flesh, blood and bones of these people."

Some stories, though, were ominous:

"The enemies of freedom are crying out insurrection. They say that the negroes intend to use and indiscriminately murder everything that is white."

These white men considered black men "vicious and revengeful because (they) assisted the United States Army in saving our country."

In Smithfield, black men were being hired out for work to the highest bidder. Men were still enslaved in Surry County, and in Nansemond County, a white man was seen whipping a black man - just as he'd done to slaves before the war.

In a letter to the editor, one man wrote, "You will see that old Virginia is reconstructing with a vengeance."

Then came the most devastating blow.

Pardoned Confederates were getting their land back. It was land that would have been given to freed slaves as a means to start their own lives.

"What a picture it would make - the pardoned rebel and a United States major general knocking at the door of the negro's first and only home to make an arrangement to restore the castle of his liberty to the former owner," the newspaper reported.

"We often hear it said that slavery is dead, that the colored people are now free like the white man.

"Nothing can be more erroneous. Slavery is not dead. The African is not free."

A GROWING FAMILY

But Edward and Grace had much to celebrate.

Their family was growing.

On Feb. 10, 1869, they welcomed their second child, Lucie.

Bennett, their first son, was born June 14, 1871.

Annie came along on Aug. 28, 1874, followed by Samuel on March 3, 1876.

Nov. 1, 1878, was Charles' birthday. And their seventh and last child, U.S. Grant, was born May 24, 1881.

According to census documents, they all lived in the Nelson Township of York County.

Their neighbors were 168 black families. Forty percent of the men owned their land. Fifty-four percent rented, and 6 percent were sharecroppers.

Their farms were largely unproductive, though, compared with neighboring farms of white families.

The average farm production for black families in 1880, according to the Agricultural Census, was $58.11. For white farmers, it was $209.07.

To get by, they planted various crops. To eat, they continued to hunt and fish and harvest oysters on the nearby York River.

Religion was a central part of life. Three churches were built on the reservation. The Ratcliffs worshipped at St. John's, which also had a small cemetery - the Cheesecake Cemetery.

"All the families - white, Indians, whatever you are - were buried there," one resident recalled.

There was "Sunday school in the morning" and "morning worship once a month, on the third Sunday."

Families lingered at the church for hours after the service, catching up on current events and local gossip.

On the second Sunday in May, the three churches would gather together for what they called "Oddfellows Turnout day." It was a time for the entire community to remember where the people there came from.

SEEKING A PENSION

In the 1880s, Edward's health started to deteriorate.

On Aug. 13, 1890, he petitioned the War Department for a disability pension. His request was turned down.

So Edward visited a doctor in Hampton. He told the doctor that his eyesight had grown weak, that he was seeing floating objects and, "at times, can hardly see at all."

He paid an attorney $10 to help him file his second request for a pension. Again, he was denied.

In 1892, Edward's family physician filed an affidavit saying Edward did, in fact, have a disability - rheumatism and failing eyesight.

The doctor was a graduate of Virginia Medical College and had been caring for the Ratcliff family for 15 years.

He called Edward a "very correct and law-abiding citizen."

On April 18, 1894 - at the request of the government - Edward returned to the Hampton doctor. That doctor reported that Edward's pulse was a normal 88, that his weight was 155 pounds and that Edward could "rise and stoop" without any hardship.

The doctor was wrong. In November 1894, Edward traveled to Norfolk, where he appeared before a notary public.

Edward explained to him that in September 1866, he became disabled in Texas when he "contracted a cold resulting in rheumatism from exposure and hardships due to the service."

His rheumatism had spread to his back, knees and limbs, leaving him unable to do most manual labor.

Because of scurvy, he'd also lost most of his teeth.

He was 59.

In March 1895, the government finally agreed to pay Edward a pension. He would receive $6 a month. By that summer, he weighed 141 pounds. He'd lost all but four teeth, and his pulse had increased.

In 1901, Edward weighed 133 pounds, and his eyesight was worsening. His back made it hard to farm.

In 1905, his pension increased to $12 a month because of a "total inability to earn a support by manual labor."

His children, now grown, were leaving to start families of their own.

His wife, Grace, had died - but he wasn't a lonely old man. After Grace's death, Edward had fallen in love again.

In 1912, the government again raised Edward's pension, this time to $30 a month.

And at 77, he married his second wife.

On Jan. 25, 1915, Edward saw his doctor for the last time. He had contracted tuberculosis.

He died March 10, 1915, at 80.

On March 11, he was buried at Cheesecake Cemetery outside St. John's Baptist Church.

His children were probably at the burial. They might have laid tiny purple flowers on his grave.

ABOUT THE SERIES

To produce this series of stories, Daily Press reporter Stephanie Heinatz interviewed members of the Radcliffe family and the Hankins family, the descendants of the owners of the land where Edward Ratcliff lived as a slave. She also reviewed dozens of documents, including family records and public...

A Civil War-period coat worn by a nurse — a woman from a prominent Mathews County family who some believe was the only woman to be commissioned as a captain in the Confederate Army — is among the nominees for Virginia's Top 10 Endangered Artifacts program.